Cape Arago

After the low bridge to the island was repeatedly washed away, bids were solicited in 1889 for the construction of a more robust high bridge, to link the island to the mainland. All of the submitted bids were deemed exorbitant, and a cable tramway was built instead in 1891. Two frame towers, one on the island and one on the mainland, supported a 400-foot long cable, and the ends of the cable were anchored in concrete. This new means of accessing the island also proved to be perilous. Just over a month before a high bridge was finally completed in July of 1898, keeper Thomas Wyman, his daughter, and two other individuals were being winched across the inlet in the cage suspended below the tramway's cable, when disaster struck. The cable snapped, plunging the passengers onto the rocky surf some sixty feet below. Wyman's legs were severely injured, and one of them was subsequently amputated.